A Great Week in the Studio

I gave myself a gift for Mother's Day.  I haven't had a lot of time recently to create.  Well, that's not exactly true.  I've been creating, as in creating a new class, but not art work.  So for Mother's Day I gave myself a week to create.

I really wanted to get a piece ready for the Annual SAQA auction.  They are due June 1 so I decided it's now or never.  I still have some work to do on this, I am going to add some beads.  Don't usually do beads but decided this was a great candidate for some beads.


 12 X 12
A Study in Green

 Close-up of A Study in Green

 Another project I've been working on this week is a portrait created using thread painting.  I think I have a good start but it is so hard finding the right color of thread.  I have blended threads in order to get just the color I want but this is not an easy job.  I do love to do this through.  Can't wait to get the wild white hair in his eyebrows and hair line.

Okay, here is my dilemma.  I belong to a wonderful fiber arts group.  We have a challenge where we are to make a monochromatic quilt. I love this group and I want to be supportive and make a piece for this challenge.  I took a wonderful photo last Summer of a sunflower. with the sun shining from behind the flower.

I've wanted to make this into a quilt since I took the photo.  Easy, right?  Not quite.  I dyed fabric last week in graded colors using Tangerine. It turned out beautiful and with a little added brighter yellow the flower develop beautifully.

Now I need a background.  If you know my work you know that I favor bright fabrics.  However, I am trying to follow the guidelines and make this monochromatic.  The piece to the left would fit the bill.  Do I like it?  I'm not sure.

So I auditioned some different backgrounds.  If I used this one it doesn't fit the bill for monochromatic but if it's better then it doesn't matter. Right?

Then I tried this piece of hand dyed multi color.  Not quite as good, in my opinion.

I feel like this is me.  I need to add some leaves and a steam.  I plan to do some hand-quilting in the center maybe add some beads.  No way does it fit the bill for the monochromatic challenge.  I have to make a decision.













Tomorrow is back to work on prepping for my class.  Which by the way is June 2-8 at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC.  There are still a few openings in case you would like to learn something new and exciting.

This post is long but I hope you will bear with me I want to add two more photos to give you an idea of what the students will be learning in this class. .

Spirit of the Kive

The technique I used to create the image for this piece will be part of my class presentation.  Included in this process is creating a four-value portrait.

A is for Aubrey


Typographic Portraits will also be taught in this class.  I will also be teaching other techniques as time allows.  Would love to see you there.  




I am linking this post to www.ninamariesayre.blogspot.com